You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief that it's over. The campaign yard signs soon to be replaced by holiday decorations. There's so much not to like about politics these days — the toxicity, the divisiveness.

For those into politics, there was victory for everyone in the 2018 midterms, a candle of hope for the political future depending on which side you fall.

Democrats are surely happy to have taken the House, ushering in the return of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrat leadership to key committees. For liberals, Tuesday was a resounding referendum on President Donald Trump's excesses from the body of Congress that most closely represents how the majority of Americans feel. Finally, a check on the wayward president.

Republicans are surely happy to have kept the Senate, holding off Democrats in some of the highest-profile races in the country, including Texas, with Democrat Beto O'Rourke losing to Republican Ted Cruz. For Republicans, their dominance in the Senate is an endorsement of Trump, whose family actively campaigned for so many of these senators; a wide-open runway to continue the conservative remaking of the judiciary and to protect the president from the liberal assault. "Tremendous success tonight. Thank you all," tweeted the president.

Both sides are emboldened. And yet zooming out, little has actually changed. The status quo of congressional inaction is likely to continue.

One of the biggest surprises of 2018 was the lack of legislative accomplishments, in spite of Republican control of the House, Senate and White House. After passing tax reform at the end of 2017, Congress seemed aimless. It was as if they surprised themselves by their own success and revealed that beyond cutting rates, they lacked an agenda on nearly any other issue.

The president, too, offered little in terms of legislative direction; his efforts were mostly executive in nature, addressing trade, immigration and regulatory reform, not to be bothered by Congress.

With Democrat control of the House and Republican control of the Senate, legislative inaction is likely to continue, if not be amplified. House Democrats have no obvious incentive to give Trump a victory and pass bipartisan legislation. Democrats have all the incentive in the world to crack down on the administration and fill their time with subpoenas.

A divided Congress may provide certainty to the markets, but it fails to ensure us that the most powerful legislative branch in the world is still capable of solving our biggest problems. (Recall that our country is $21 trillion in the red; upward mobility has stalled; and a historic share of Americans have decided it no longer makes sense to work).

Democrats won't be held accountable for failing to solve these problems — how can they be? They only control the House. Republicans won't be held accountable for results — how can they be? They can't get anything past the House Democrats. One can see the line graph of trust in our institutions dipping lower.

And the reality is that very little could have happened on Tuesday that would have changed this gridlock. If Democrats gained control of both the House and the Senate, Trump would veto their proposals while they tried to impeach him. A political standoff.

If Republicans had kept the House and the Senate, there would be little reason to expect anything other than continuation of the inaction that has marked the last year. Republican voters have not demanded legislative action outside of the appointment of conservative judges to the federal courts and holding off the increasingly progressive Democrat agenda. In other words, almost any Republican straw man would do.

This should be a wake-up call. Inaction is the inertia. And the way out might not be as easy as changing out Rs for Ds or Ds for Rs. Unless something much deeper changes, we are headed down a road that few people want.

There's no reason why 2018 is an inflection point on its own. In fact, all logic suggests it will not be, and that political gridlock will continue and intensify. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be. By the very nature of being a divided Congress, the next Congress could be one of bipartisan leadership and sustainable reforms.

Goodness knows there are any number of bipartisan reforms that could be pursued — from paid parental leave, to infrastructure, to wage subsidies, to entitlement reform, to education reform. Policies that a bipartisan Congress could take on and that would result in dramatic improvements in the quality of life for millions of Americans.

But based on the reactions to the midterms, I'm not sure we are there just yet. Instead, the trenches seem to have been dug a little deeper.

Abby M. McCloskey is an economist and founder of McCloskey Policy LLC. She has advised multiple presidential campaigns. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.